🔔🎄 Bells 🎄🔔

The village was tucking in for a winter’s night sleep, yet still windows glowed with Christmas Eve candles burning, and somewhere a jaunty festive tune was being belted out behind barroom doors. The wind this night was without care; untamed frost and arctic ice jungles rode its back. The moon came and went, illuminating the barren roads when the clouds passed or parted. Here, now, snow began falling from above—not much, but adding to the already wickedly frozen night. 

From somewhere lost in darkness, bells jingled. A shadow pranced along a moonless alley. Where the shadow came from, I do not know—I have only just arrived here in this story with you, watching, listening. The shadow kicked over a wooden cask filled with garbage, sending a nearby hungry raccoon scurrying away into the moonlit road. Bells jingled loudly from the shadow, until they settled to a quiet jangling again with every ostentatious step forward of the shadow. And, with a leap, the shadow emerged onto the road that wound through the middle of the village. No longer enshrouded in darkness, the shadow now shone like the glitter of untouched snow. The shadow transformed to light, but more than that, the shadow was sound, and the sound, if you are wondering, was the ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling of Christmas bells. Bells, round jingle bells, some the size of a quarter, others big as ripe, red apples; these bells were sewn onto a brown rope, and the brown rope cinched the waist of the sprite’s green dress. This creature was so desperate for attention, jangling its bells with fervor. Keep in mind, reader, that you, too, would be hungry for attention if you only existed one night a year. Which was exactly how this curious beastie lived. It stood six feet tall, dressed in, as I have stated, a green dress with a brown rope fastened around the waist. Sleeves fell to the wrist, the hemline at the knees. A white collar around the neck. The dress was made of… something unknown… a fabric that could never be woven by mortal hands, but it looked rather like soft velvet, shimmering under the moonshine. It would have been an elegant dress but for how old and frayed it was, and, of course, the brown rope belt was not becoming. 

It obscured itself under an ugly Hessian hood that covered the beast’s head and face, with ragged holes sliced into it for hidden eyes. It smiled often under the mask, but the world never saw. On its feet it donned nothing; it never cared for shoes. It was not a man, certainly not, nor was it a woman. But it could assail and beset and raid with all the brutality of a man, and beguile and possess and devour with all the ruination of a woman. But as I have pointed out, it smiled often. And it had gifts to give. Homes to visit. Children to meet. And, more than likely, a good number of parents to chastise. 

What is that, reader? Am I forgetting something? Ah yes, you are correct. In its left hand. I see it. Indeed I do, and I, too, am curious about what it holds, what the purpose of it is. It makes me feel ill, for one reason or another. Like the dress, it is not something made by mortals, it is a manifestation of pure and untapped devastation. But we will get back to it, and exactly what it is.

The bells jingled and jangled, the creature of Christmas pranced and skipped along the road, onto the sidewalk, knocking on doors it never intended to wait for and dashing away. Part of the creature thrived on simple human annoyances. 

It passed a cat shivering on a doorstep. They gazed at each other. The cat meowed and it was a weak sound in the frozen nightland. From nothing and nowhere, the Christmas creature conjured a rotten red plum in its hand. It whipped the fruit at the cat. The plum crashed into the door, just above the cat’s head, splattering plum innards all over the freezing feline. 

Away the bell jingling beast ran. It found more trash to spill, more animals to throw molding fruits at, more chances to scurry away. The evening was growing weary and late. The creature stalked a small outcropping of homes. It peeked in foggy windows. Christmas abounded inside these homes. The creature did not know how to choose, so it closed its eyes, spun around in a circle twelve times, then halted and pointed its finger forward. It opened its eyes. 

The beast stood before a house like any other, but its windows shining a little dimmer, its Christmas tree a little drier, a little sadder, and no presents beneath its branches. And, yes, a woman sitting by the dwindling fire in its sooty niche, staring into the oblivion of embers. And her husband, splayed out in a sleepy stupor on his chair, his hand hardly holding onto the bottle of brown ale. The creature turned and bent toward the house, raising a claw up to where its ear would have been if not covered by the burlap hood. It blocked the rest of the soft world out and listened to the house. It searched with its ear until it heard it. There were the dreamsounds of babes in their beds. A young girl and younger boy. The creature grinned, a mouthful of menace and malice under the ugly hood. It approached the front door. Tapped its bells against the wood. Gently. Then harder. Harder still. The bells shrieked in the silent town. Jingling without end. Footsteps from inside came stumbling to the door. The creature leapt back and the door swung open. The slumped man in the doorway peered out through bleary, red eyes. He saw there a stranger in a woven hood and pine needle dress standing at the bottom of the steps. His eyes widened. He glanced at the stranger’s hands. Clutched in its right hand was what I told you we would return to: this mystical object of legend, a depraved, unholy talisman – a rute, a switch clipped from an unknown tree, from an unknownable place. The man slammed the door closed but it would not shut all the way; he could still see onto the road, and the cold found his ruby, round face. He pushed against the door, all his weight pushing, and still the door remained open just a crack. He looked down. The stranger’s slender foot was stuck between the door and its frame. And now the stranger’s fingers appeared on the door, the nails terrible and sharp as rows of shark teeth. The man’s strength suddenly gave out; the pressure the stranger placed against the door tripled his own. He fell back, tripping over a rug, and the door opened with a slow squeal of rusted hinges. The stranger hopped inside. 

‘Stay away,’ the man choked out. He reached for a snow shovel leaning against the wall, a weapon to use. The shovel flew away from him and landed at the stranger’s feet. The stranger held its hand over the shovel. The tool raised from the floor then disappeared like it was never there. 

‘Rudy?’ called the man’s wife from the other room. ‘Who is at the door?’

‘Stay away,’ the man again told the phantom in the doorway. 

‘What?’ asked his wife. ‘What did you say?’ Her footsteps approached.

‘Do not come in here!’ the man yelled at his wife. Her footsteps stopped. 

‘Rudy?’ she said.

The stranger smiled at the man. The man could not see the wicked smile directed his way, and he would not have returned the smile regardless. He could not feel the beast’s elation, he could not sense it.

‘Rudy?’ repeated the man’s wife, her voice a whisper, flooded with dread. 

‘Get the children,’ said the creature in the doorway. 

The man winced. Was it at the sound of the stranger’s voice? Well, yes, it could be nothing else. With a voice like broken glass swallowed, or the creaking of winter wind birch branches, or mourning doves. All those clashing tones ground together.

‘Please,’ the creature requested of its host, ‘get your children.’

The man’s wife was now by his side. She held onto his arm, staring at their visitor, all color in her face gone. 

‘No,’ the man said. Then quickly he added, ‘There are no children here.’

The creature leaned toward the couple. ‘I can hear your children dreaming of sugarplums,’ it said. ‘And I come bearing gifts.’ Under the hood, its rictus grin faltered and returned and vanished again.

‘You are not wanted here,’ the man named Rudy said, raising his voice. ‘I think I know who you are—I heard stories told about you when I was a lad, horrible stories—but we have no children. It is just me and my wife.’

The creature sang softly and weirdly. ‘So this is Christmas…’

The man’s brow furrowed. He pushed his wife behind him. The stranger kept singing, now jingling the bells around its waist. ‘And what have you done?’

‘Be gone from here,’ the man choked out. 

The creature ignored him. ‘Another year over…and a new one just begun…’

‘Enough! Leave!’ shouted the man named Rudy. 

The unnatural intruder swayed to its quiet song, then stopped and told the drunk man, ‘You won’t ever know that one…that wonderful song of peace and harmony for Christmastide. John Lennon, that will be his name…the singer…I see him now…oh, my…it’s horrid…oh, it’s awful…all the blood…all that blood…’

There was silence. Then from upstairs, a creak.

The stranger tilted its head and raised its cutout eyes to the noise. ‘Now, who is that?’

The man said nothing. His face was stone. 

‘We have a dog,’ said the woman.

‘What is your name?’ asked the stranger.

‘Clare.’

‘A difficult marriage,’ said the creature. ‘Rudy and Clare. In a home of disrepair. With a depressing dog. What’s the mutt’s name?’

Neither of them responded right away. 

‘No name?’ wondered the stranger. ‘Because no dog?’

Footsteps thumped on the second floor, walking across the floorboards toward the stairs. 

‘Well, I’ll be,’ the hooded stranger said. ‘Here comes the pooch now by the sounds of it.’

A boy with rusty hair appeared on the stairs. He stopped when he saw the stranger. 

‘Now that is one ugly looking dog,’ laughed the creature.

More footsteps scuttled on the floor above, making for the stairs. A girl appeared beside the boy, his older sister with the same ruddy hair.

‘Two dogs!’ the creature exclaimed, smiling wide beneath the mask and jangling its belt bells wildly. ‘Two dogs!’ It looked to the man. ‘Tell your mutts to please come down, there is no reason to be afraid. I come bearing gifts, as I have already mentioned.’

‘Be gone, beast!’ the man shouted.

The creature raised the rute it held toward the children on the stairs and they were lifted into the air, floating down the stairs until the creature set them in front of itself.

The man took a step forward and again the creature raised the rute, jutting it now toward the man, and he froze, unable to take another step closer. 

‘I have business here, Rudy,’ the stranger explained. ‘Let me complete what I have to complete and I shall be on my way and you shall have your Christmas…be it merry or misery.’

The woman stepped around her husband and rushed to her children, her arms outstretched to them.

‘Let me…complete…my business,’ the stranger hissed, freezing the woman where she was with the twitch of the rute.

‘Up,’ the creature commanded the children on the floor, and they stood. ‘Hold out your hands.’

Their father lurched forward and, like his wife, froze in place, the creature flicking the rute in his direction. The man’s eyes bulged watching his children hold out their palms to the stranger in the awful hood.

The creature vanished the rute into the folds of its dress; it crouched down and clutched the boy’s wrists. The boy looked at the floor and whimpered. ‘Do not fear Bels,’ the stranger cooed. ‘Look at me.’

The boy kept his eyes lowered.

‘Please look at me,’ said the creature. Its voice was sweet cascading snow.

The boy raised his eyes. He looked into the holes cut into the burlap mask. Only blackness there, shadows and voids.

‘I am smiling at you,’ said the creature. ‘You cannot see my smile, but it is there.’ The creature pushed up the child’s pajama sleeves, exposing his arms. ‘Can you feel that I am smiling? That I am happy to see you?’

The boy nodded and he smiled meekly back at the being before him.

‘You are a good boy,’ said the stranger. He looked down. ‘But, tragic, tragic,’ it grumbled. ‘Dastardly. Utterly shameful.’

The creature was examining the boy’s arms. Dozens of blue and purple and yellowed marks stained his young skin. ‘Monstrous,’ snarled the stranger, glancing at the child’s father. It lowered the boy’s sleeves and turned to the girl, grasping her delicate wrists. 

‘Do not fear Bels,’ the intruder whispered in her ear. ‘And look upon me, please.’

Like her brother, the girl stared into the lightless wells of the burlap mask.

‘Turtle dove bones,’ the creature told the girl in her nightgown. ‘You are as fragile as turtle dove bones.’ It raised her sleeves as it had her brother’s. It studied the dozen dark islands marking her flesh. The stranger sighed behind its woven hood. ‘It is an unforgivable thing,’ it said, gentle in the dim house. The creature glared at the fiend called Rudy. Its voice grew bramble thorns. ‘To hurt your babies with such malice in your heart.’ It cast its empty eyes at the woman frozen in place. ‘To do nothing to end it.’ And it turned back to the children. Tears dripped from the holes in the burlap. ‘To be the innocent.’ The stranger brushed their faces with its fingers. ‘Kind, tender children,’ it whispered. They could hear its silver smile. ‘You both are on my friend’s nice list.’ It touched their exposed arms. ‘Your parents are…not on that list, I’m sorry to say.’ The creature lowered their sleeves. It stood tall. The girl and boy gazed up at the kind stranger. The fiend called Rudy gulped and could only watch. The woman named Clare stared and ached in her frozen position. Her tears were trapped within her eyes, blurring her vision.

‘Do you fear Bels?’ asked the hooded creature.

‘No,’ replied the children, and they could see the sides of the burlap mask raise in a most merry and mischievous grin.

There was a frenzy of whiplash movement. Almost too fast for the eye to comprehend. A scarlet mist hung in the air where the children and the stranger had been standing.

The fiend Rudy dropped to the floor; their mother Clare collapsed beside him. Her tears finally poured from her eyes. The man looked at his wife. She sobbed and stared back. She was drenched in red. The wall behind her was painted red. The ceiling was a mess of red and starting to drip. The floor was slick with all the red. The man touched his face and his hand came away smeared red. The smell of rust filled their noses. The woman vomited.

‘Rudy,’ a depraved voice called from the parlor. ‘Clare. Would you join me please?’

The man and woman were lost in their waking nightmare, soaked in this crimson fog.

‘Do you fear Bels?’ came the voice again, so wretched it was. ‘Whether you do or do not, I must stress the importance of your audience. Please…join Bels by the fire.’

The man and woman felt their bodies raised from the sodden floor. They stood on their feet, but it was not their choice. They turned and walked into the parlor, but it was not their choice. They stood before the creature sitting in the man’s chair. The creature, too, was covered in red—from Hessian hood to shoeless feet.

‘You may ask me the question on your minds,’ prompted the stranger beneath the burlap mask.

Neither spoke, both still trapped in the miasma of this nightmare. 

‘“Where are our children?”’ the creature asked for them. 

‘Where are they?’ the woman mumbled, her mouth quavering violently.

The intruder rubbed its hands over its mask and exhaled a great gust. ‘You really want to know?’

‘Where are our children?’ the fiend Rudy spat, emerging from his stupor, but still in no control of his own body.

‘You are covered in them,’ said the creature, with no emotions behind the words. It pointed at their faces and swirled its finger, its talon. 

There was only the quiet snapping of the burning firewood, the hum of the embers.

The stranger held up the rute. It dripped with blood, their children’s blood. ‘You did not deserve their good will,’ it snarled. ‘Their good manners…their good humor…their total and unselfish goodness.’

The woman named Clare was weeping again and screaming and shrieking, No no no no no no no no…

Rudy the fiend was trying to claw at the stranger, trying to tear the intruding beast asunder. But his body simply would not obey him, he remained where he was, motionless.

‘Do not waste your energy,’ the creature told the man. It pushed itself up from the chair. ‘You are vile,’ it growled into the fiend’s ear.

No no no no NO NO NO, the woman was caterwauling. The stranger lifted the rute and bashed the ancient weapon across her head. She crumpled to the floor. The stranger leaned down, and into her bleeding ear, it damned her. To the darkest, coldest, dampest alcove of the underworld, it damned her. ‘Maybe I will visit you down there, Clare,’ it chuckled. ‘I know the lunatic in charge of the place. He will make sure you are comfortable in your…unfathomable uncomfort.’

The fiend Rudy was shouting and crying and howling at the creature, at the blood of his babies covering everything. He saw the stranger disappear behind him. 

The rute came down on his skull and he dropped to the floor. His ears bled. His vision swam. His wife’s breathing was ragged.

‘Ta-ta!’ sang the stranger pirouetting and prancing over their bodies. 

The last things the man and woman heard were the door swing open, the door crash shut, and the drop drop drop of bloody dew dripping from the ceiling.

There went the festive and debauched wanderer, skittering upon the ice-hardened dust roads, spitting and cursing and throwing rocks at the moon. It laughed and kicked the powder snow, it wailed at skunks hidden under porches. It rapped on door after door, smashing through mothers and fathers to seize their bruised and battered babies and dispatch them into hematic vapors and wall dressings of blood. Screams emanated from one house and then another and so forth all the night long. And always there was the stranger, bouncing gaily from the gored and ravaged homes, twirling its ruddy rute, pleased as a plum in a pie. The moon was dipping, the eastern horizon glowing with that despicable sun. The creature flung its weapon at the rising star. 

‘Bah!’ it cried, shooing the sun away, but it was no use. ‘Oh no! I need that!’ The stranger, the beast in the Hessian hood, the creature of bleak wintertide, scurried off into the dark to retrieve its savage talisman.

It was the splendor of morning overflowing into the room that woke the man and woman from their deep, dreamless stupor. They were looking at each other, seeing each other in the rosy dawnlight. 

‘Rudy,’ the woman said.

The man opened his mouth and no words came.

Footsteps ran down the stairs, jubilant, jolly voices with them. ‘Look at the presents!’ the children squealed. They jumped over their parents lying on the floor and dove for the wrapped gifts under the Christmas tree. Ribbons and string were tossed aside and boxes torn open. The girl and boy held up their new wooden toys in wonder.

The man and woman sat up. They stared at their children who glowed in the sunshine through the windows. The girl crawled over and hugged her father. 

‘Thank you so much, papa,’ she said. ‘Merry Christmas.’ The girl pulled away and went back to her new toy. Her sleeve rose while she played. There were no marks on her arm, her skin was unmarred. The boy was hugging his mother, and the man reached over and lifted the boy’s sleeve. His arm was as it should have always been, clean and fragile and free of trauma. 

He looked at his wife and she was sobbing, silently, into the child’s shoulder.

‘Papa, there’s a present for you.’ The girl was holding out a small wrapped box to him. 

He took it in his shaking hand. He undid the wrapping and opened the box. There was a torn bit of parchment at the bottom with writing on it. The man lifted it and read the dizzying, sanguine script that looped along the margins and into the center.

You do not deserve them, and I do not wish to return,

swirled the words across the paper,

and if you do not improve, I will return in ONE YEAR and do what you thought I did. 

Happy Christmas.

All my love and lots of fear,

Bels